While the fate of the art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts is threatened with sale in the city bankruptcy, a new documentary premiering Wednesday sheds light onto the history of one of the top comprehensive art museums on the country.

The Detroit Public Television documentary “Detroit Art City,” premiering at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11, on WTVS-Channel 56, will provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on the museum.

Offering the backstory of the changing face of the museum and the efforts to overcome past challenges, the documentary traces how the museum differs from others like it in the country, including in how it is funded, leading to campaign for the millage to fund the facility and its precarious position as a part of Detroit’s assets.

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Since its founding in 1885, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has seen boom times and periods of deep crisis, including its current precarious role in Detroit’s unfolding bankruptcy. The 60-minute “Detroit Art City” takes viewers behind the scenes at the DIA to trace the museum’s triumphs and challenges through the years.

The DIA is recognized as one of the top six comprehensive art museums in the U.S. Yet unlike most major cultural institutions elsewhere, an appropriate operating endowment was never established for the DIA — a consequence of the city’s former industrial wealth.

In recent times, as other museums struggle with attendance issues, the DIA as broke with tradition by rethinking what art it displays and how to display it. “Detroit Art City” shows this transformation and explains how, despite the success of the museum’s groundbreaking reinstallation in 2007, the DIA was faced with an unthinkable crisis in 2012. After a loss of all municipal funding, the museum’s fate rested on the success of the surrounding tri-county’s approval of a property tax.

Detroit Art City goes inside the DIA’s property tax campaign and August 2012 primary election that placed the fate of the museum into the hands of voters in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Detroit radio host Angelo B. Henderson, this very real snapshot of the status and future of the arts in Detroit provides a rare window into the nation’s most talked-about art museum.

“Detroit Art City” is a production of Detroit Public TV in partnership with the Detroit Institute of Arts. The producer, director and writer is Genevieve G. Savage, and the director of photography is Bill Kubota. Video editors are Grace Raso and Jordan Wingrove. Executive producer for Detroit Public TV is Jeff Forster.